It’s Sunday morning and the faithful have gathered. This morning I find myself sitting behind three generations—the parents, their daughter and her husband, and the young granddaughter seated between her grandparents. It’s another reminder to me of a new generation of Friends within Hometown Friends Church. The family came to Hometown Friends about eight years ago without previous involvement in a Friends Church, but this little girl in front of me will receive her formative spiritual nurture here and as an adult she will be part of what I will call the Hometown Friends Alumni group.

Hometown Friends is such an old, established church that eight years doesn’t seem as long here as it would anywhere else. I’m picturing the church as a big oak tree with Christ as the roots and trunk. Some of the leaves grow off of branches that have been grafted on, but in a short time it’s impossible to know when or where the grafts took place.